Opinion: Editorials

Editorial: Snapshots from the nation's press

President Barack Obama greets children from Al-Rahmah school and other guests during his visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore last Wednesday. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP)

Obama visits a mosque

When President Obama visited a synagogue in Washington last May, his second time at a Jewish house of worship in this country as chief executive, there wasn't a peep from the Republican candidates seeking their party's presidential nomination. Yet when Mr. Obama turned up at the Islamic Society of Baltimore last Wednesday, his first visit to an American mosque after seven years in office, Republican presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) let loose a toxic barrage of snark and sanctimony.

The president's message at the suburban Baltimore mosque was patriotic, inclusive, tolerant and empathetic — it was, in short, presidential. Mindful of FBI statistics and reports of rising vandalism, threats and other hate crimes against American Muslims and mosques — including the mosque in Baltimore he visited — Mr. Obama delivered a timely reminder that Muslims belong in the United States and are as fully American as Christians, Jews and any other citizens. In that sense his remarks were, almost literally, all-American.

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It's fair to say the president waited too long to visit an American mosque, though he's been to ones overseas. Hate crimes against American Muslims and places of worship have quintupled since Sept. 11, 2001, and they jumped again in 2014 even as such crimes declined against other groups, according to the FBI. (In raw numbers, there are still more hate crimes directed at Jews than Muslims in the United States.)

Since the terrorist attacks in Paris in November and in San Bernardino, Calif., the following month, there has been a new spike in hate crimes against Muslims and mosques, including vandalism, graffiti, verbal threats and assaults. They are a gift to the Islamic State and encouraged, intentionally or not, by Mr. Trump, Mr. Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.), Ben Carson and other GOP luminaries, who have cynically taken the terrorists' carnage as opportunities to whip up xenophobic fear and venom.

—Washington Post

Mayor makes right move

Denver's mayor had every reason to be at the Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos playing, and it is not a problem that taxpayers were footing the bill for him and a handful of staffers.

Sure, some people will grouse about almost any public money that goes to pay for official trips out of state because the practice is so easily abused. But in this case, the potential benefits from having the team and its mayor at the nation's biggest sporting spectacle far outweighed the minuscule costs to the budget.

Two years ago, Mayor Michael Hancock was rightly criticized for accepting a trip to the Super Bowl that was paid for by the Metro Denver Sports Commission funded with donations from businesses with city contracts, including Comcast. The $40,000 gift paid for Hancock, his mother and city staffers to watch the Broncos' unfortunate loss to the Seattle Seahawks.

In 2014 the ethics board decreed Hancock didn't break any rules, but that was more a reflection of Denver's lenient ethics provisions (which have since been somewhat tightened) than a reasonable assessment of the actual conflict in accepting the gift. In any event, the appearance of conflict should have been enough to point the mayor in a different direction.

Thankfully, Hancock this time took a different tack. The airfare and hotel stay for his wife and daughter were paid out of his own pocket. City funds were spent on the mayor, two staffers and two security officers. The Broncos provided tickets.

This is legitimate. The city's mayor should have been there to represent Denver as well as take advantage of opportunities to promote it.

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story